Displeasing Image of a Boy Rescued From the Rubble after Syrian Airstrike
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Omran Daqneesh’s bare feet barely reach the edge of the chair as he sits alone in the back of the ambulance.
The five-year-old’s eyes are glassy with shock and he seems hardly aware of the blood seeping from a wound in his forehead.
The little Syrian boy was one of five children injured by a Russian or Assad regime strike in the Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo.
His photograph, which was shared thousands of times on social media, captures just a fragment of the horrors of Aleppo as it endures wave after wave of punishing airstrikes.
Omran was injured in a blast on Wednesday evening along with four other children, one woman and two young men, according to an Aleppo doctor who asked not to be identified.
Video footage shot by the Aleppo Media Center shows rescuers pulling him from the rubble of a house and sitting him in the back of an ambulance. He does not cry but eventually raises a small hand to his injuries.
Omran was taken to the M10 hospital, which has itself been struck repeatedly by airstrikes.
Physicians there treated his head injury and cleaned off the dust that caked his hair, eyes, and clothes. He was released later that night.
Doctors at M10 said that around 12 other children all under the age of 15 were treated on Wednesday.
More than 300,000 Syrians are estimated to have been killed in the country’s civil war and it is impossible to know how many civilians have died in airstrikes in Aleppo in recent weeks.
While the city has been under bombardment for years, the attacks have stepped up since a combined force of rebels and jihadists earlier this month broke a regime siege that cut off part of the city for a month.
Russian and Syrian regime aircraft responded with intensified bombing as they try to close a narrow corridor opened up between besieged east Aleppo and the rest of the city.
Tomorrow there will, no doubt, be more strikes and more children like Omran will be hurt.
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